Blogging the Circling of the Square

Members from the Making Science Public programme co-organised a very successful interdisciplinary conference (20-22 May) with the University of Nottingham’s Science, Technology and Society research Priority Group, led by Reiner Grundmann. Sarah Hartley, Philip Moriarty and Brigitte Nerlich were part of the conference committee and Warren Pearce contributed to a panel session. Almost all of the PIs and Making Science Public fellows participated in the conference. Three Honorary Associates to the programme made important contributions to the conference as panellists and keynote speakers: Sheila Jasanoff, Stephen Turner and Steve Rayner.

The conference was entitled ‘Circling the square: Research, politics, media and impact’ and, thanks to lots of hard work by Phil Moriarty,June McCombie, Georgina Endfield and other members of the STS PG management group, brought together a broad spectrum of natural scientists, social scientists, humanities scholars, representatives of NGOs and interest groups, young and old. It was actually lovely to see so many PhD students from the natural sciences keen to learn more about science and politics and the media.

Keynote lectures and panel discussions provoked very lively and spirited debates which circled around facts and values in science and politics, the impact of the UK’s impact agenda, the complex interactions between scientists and policy makers, as well as scientists and journalists.

Here are some blog posts on the conference posted during the conference:

Philip Moriarty, a nanoscientist (Nottingham) (and also an Honorary Associate to the MSciP programme), reported on the robust exchanges between those who see science as an essentially politicised/political activity and those who still believe in types of scientific endeavour that are relatively disinterested.

Athene Donald, a soft matter physicist (Cambridge), tried to inject some positive thoughts into a relatively negatively tinted but very lively debate about science and the media sparked by a great keynote lecture given by Andy Williams (Cardiff).

Sylvia McLain, a bio-physicist (Oxford), put the notion of ‘scientist’ and various misconceptions surrounding it under the microscope.

The conference ended with a very animated debate chaired by Brigitte which again tackled issues around facts, values and impacts and ended with Kate Roach reading out a short story that made people think about these issues from a different and hopefully thought-provoking perspective.

Megan Beech, who is doing a PhD on the social impact of research, wrote a post on her blog ‘The misadventures of Dr Beech’ about research governance, research communication and impact (and how lovely the University of Nottingham is :))

Also have a look at the long stream of tweets produced during the conference. And here is a storify account.

There is now a conference BLOG which will feature films of all the keynotes and sessions.

Many thanks for this perspective from the front line so to speak. There are dangers inherent in press releases of course in terms of adding what some call ‘a pinch of hype’. However, whenever I have interacted with the people who write them (and I haven’t done that a lot, I have to say), I have learned something. Especially if you have a chance to chat about a project with a PR or comms person, you realise that they are very good at asking critical questions!! And of course they are also good at turning turgid stuff into less turgid stuff 😉 As for the pinch of hype, we all add it to things now, I believe.

Although the scientist inside me hates to say it – without the ‘pinch of hype’ in a press release it’s likely to get ditched before being read… Perhaps the answer is to craft that first paragraph incredibly carefully to give the real story behind the hype, while still leaving a little creativity in the headline?